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RBC Thought Leadership AI, Technology and Innovation Lightning Round With Two Canadian Entrepreneurs
AI, Technology and Innovation
AI, Technology and Innovation

Lightning Round With Two Canadian Entrepreneurs

Two Canadian entrepreneurs share their advice on building a company and selling to large organizations.

Read time 2 minutes

Q: What’s Your Biggest Pet Peeve When It Comes to Large Organizations Working With Entrepreneurs?

Darrell: Having to be bounced between multiple people to explain the opportunity repeatedly and not having clarity about who can prioritize. Corporates need someone who acts as a project manager to vet the opportunity in full internally in the organization. Similar to how a VC firm vets opportunities then brings them internally to an investment committee team once initially vetted accordingly. Jamie: Large organizations often don’t appreciate the real resource constraints of entrepreneurial businesses. A large organization can send many people to several lengthy meetings over and over again, while entrepreneurs can barely sacrifice 30 minutes.

Q: What’s the Smartest Thing an Entrepreneur Can Do to Get Through the Door of a Large Corporate?

Darrell: Put yourself in the corporate’s shoes: why would they want the meeting? What’s in it for them? Understand their needs. Don’t look desperate or look like you are for sale. Have a compelling value proposition a corporate could see benefit in or don’t waste your time. Jamie: Find a champion in the large corporation who’ll shepherd the entrepreneur to the right person to begin a real discussion. Darrell: Learn how to sell. Enterprise sales needs to be a function of your company’s DNA. There are winners and losers based on the deals they can do. If you can’t sell, hire someone who can to manage the process.

Q: What Do Canadian Entrepreneurs Need to Do to Take on the World?

Darrell: Depends on the stage of the company. They are not bound by borders like large corporates, but you need to methodically know how to approach. On one hand, limiting yourself to Canada will not get you the scale you want long term, but a great market to launch and get to revenue stage in Year One. Trying to boil the ocean all at once will burn a lot of capital and not gain you not a lot of relevance anywhere at your initial stage. Jamie: Set goals to be a world-leading. Whether it’s building a world class team or world class product, there’s no reason a company in Canada can’t be world-leading. Darrell: Stop labelling yourself as a Canadian start up. You are a start-up that happens to be domiciled in Canada, but solves problem X for customer Y with a compelling value proposition. Absolutely think bigger.

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